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Tesla: Model X Accident Caused By Driver Error, Not Autopilot (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla has responded to a recent report from a Model X owner claiming their vehicle suddenly accelerated at "maximum speed" by itself, jumped a curb and slammed into the side of a building while his wife was sitting behind the wheel. They said it analyzed vehicle logs, "which confirm that this Model X was operating correctly under manual control and was never in Autopilot or cruise control at the time of the incident or in the minutes before. Data shows that the vehicle was traveling at 6 mph when the accelerator pedal was abruptly increased to 100%. Consistent with the driver's action, the vehicle applied torque and accelerated as instructed. Safety is the top priority at Tesla and we engineer and build our cars with this foremost in mind. We are pleased that the driver is ok and ask our customers to exercise safe behavior when using our vehicles." When will people stop lying about Tesla's Autopilot mode crashing their cars? One Tesla owner recently filed a Lemon Law claim against the company over a high number of quality control issues.
I'd be inclined to agree with you but for one thing... A few years ago Tesla let BBC Top Gear test a Roadster, and Jeremy Clarkson lampooned the vehicle in a way that annoyed Elon Musk. Ever since then Tesla have put a *lot* of data capture capability and performance monitoring into all of their vehicles, specifically to stop these sorts of claims.
If Tesla are saying that the telemetry from the black box shows 100% throttle, then at this juncture, I'd be inclined to believe them.
Years ago I spent my spare time helping a friend run his garage business, which included running a contract with a local Police force to recover accident-damaged vehicles. I saw numerous examples of situations in which drivers of automatic cars [and all Teslas are automatic by default] encountered something unexpected on the road. Their first instinct was to slam down on the brake pedal, but you would be amazed at how many managed to hit the throttle by mistake. In the panic and shock of an event, the body can lock up involuntarily, especially, if you think about it, if your car suddenly shot forward under the full acceleration that a Tesla is capable of...
It's way too early to say without more concrete data, but based on the above two points [knowledge of Tesla's extensive telemetry and personal experience of real-world examples like this] my "Occam's Razor" punt would suggest that something happened, the driver panicked, hit the wrong pedal, and the rest is history...
There's nothing preventing "45 year old wives" from knowing something about the machines they operate. Actually, I do expect people operating machinery that can lead to accidents that endanger the lives of others to know enough about them to operate them safely. Independent of gender, race, age... you get the idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Majority voting with three systems has turned out to be dangerous on quite a few occasions. At least with two systems disagreeing, you can decide "I don't know which one is right, so I'll do the safe thing". With two out of three giving an incorrect value, it leads to misplaced confidence in this wrong value.
Examples:
- (human): Primary altimeters different between captain and F/O, standby altimeter agrees with captain, but F/O altimeter was correct. Don't remember the flight number or even the company, but they crashed into a mountain. If they hadn't had the standby altimeter, they would have gone with the lowest of the two indications until they could intercept a glide slope somewhere.
- (automatic): The A320 has independent Angle Of Attack probes, but if you climb through heavy icing, it turns out two can freeze up at the same time. The system sees a confirmed stall (even though it should be impossible given the current speed, attitude and inertial measurements) because two systems agreeing can't ever be wrong, and it pushes the nose down. Even if both pilots pull back on the stick, the nose continues to drop. We now have an official procedure to shut off two of the Air Data Reference units, leaving only one remaining. That's the only way of shaking the absolute confidence of the system in two identical but false signals.
You may laugh, but, from the actual article:
"researchers found that there were seven to 15 crashes per month in the U.S. caused by pedal application errors. Females were the drivers in nearly two-thirds of the pedal misapplication crashes identified in crash databases and in a media scan used in the study."
I know, right? It's like when Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks a sledgehammer they call it "art" and she's an "artist", but when I do it, they're all like "We're going to have to ask you to leave the hardware store" and stuff. I just don't get some people.
Maybe, but I can barely make out what you're saying because your horse is too high.
Users are also capable of not telling the truth. The logs are almost certainly accurate.
That doesn't entirely rule out a fault - if the system erroneously reads a 100% accelerator pedal depression, then it will record that and act on it; the error then being in the sensor, not the logging or action taken by the car.
But when somebody is parking, they are going to press the brake to stop - and if they find they are not stopping, or accelerating, they'll press it harder. So a 100% depression is also consistent with someone mistakenly pressing the accelerator instead of the brake.
When you make it possible to the blame the car, some people are going to do so instead of taking responsibility. On balance, I'm inclined to believe this was user error.
Tesla lost because the judge determined the show was entertainment and not a documentary or news program and had no requirement to be factual.
They lied and faked almost the entire thing.
His suggestion was that *everyone* puts fashion before safety, and that the difference is primarily because social norms prevent males from wearing similar footwear. That you somehow interpreted it as "women are the only ones who put fashion before safety" is intriguing and rather telling.
I did have an issue with an Audi several years ago. My cruise control would periodically turn itself on. They checked the computer, and it was reading occasional faults in the cruise control switch, so they replaced it. The problem continued. Sometimes over bumps, but also sometimes when I would turn on my turn signal. The turn signal and cruise control switches were both stalks on the left side of the column. The dealer read the codes again, and again said the cruise control switch was reporting faults and wanted to change it again. When I protested, and pointed out that it would turn on when I turned on my turn signal, they assumed that I was mistaking the two stalks. (to which point I asked them to investigate why my turn signal was turning on when I activated my cruise control...) It was only after the service manager finally driving it around and being able to duplicate the issue that they believed me. They ultimately replaced the control module in the steering column, which contained both switches, which solved the problem. Not saying that the brakes and gas pedal go into the same control module, but I can certainly see a case where the control module has a fault which is reading the wrong input.